Soundarya Rajinikanth says parents Rajinikanth and Latha were her rock in divorce

Soundarya Rajinikanth has credited her parents, Rajinikanth and Latha, with carrying her through her divorce. She also says the male-dominated home she grew up in is finally changing.

The producer spoke to Nayandeep Rakshit while promoting her latest production, Love, which is now streaming on Netflix. She said her generation mostly grew up in homes where men called the shots, and her own was no different. The change with her parents came only recently, she added, because the idea of love shifts with age. What love meant to her at 20 was not what it meant at 40, she said, and her parents have been learning too.

On her divorce from businessman Ashwin Ramkumar, Soundarya called a father a girl's first man and a mother her first friend, a bond she said only grows stronger over time. "I couldn't have done it without them," she said of how her parents backed her in that hard phase.

That split did not shake her faith in marriage. "It was just a wrong relationship," she said. She took time to heal and was eager to marry again. She also pointed out that a man who remarries after a divorce faces little scrutiny, while a woman who wants the same gets judged.

Today she is married to Vishagan Vanangamudi. The two follow one simple rule, she said: each meets the other halfway, and neither insists on getting their own way.

Ashwin and Soundarya married in 2010. Their son, Ved, was born in 2015, and the couple divorced in 2017.